Happy Birthday, ‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper! 5 Furious Facts About The Wrestling Legend


“Rowdy” Roddy Piper was one of professional wrestling’s biggest box office stars in the 1980s, and certainly wrestling’s loudest and most electric personality. More than 30 years after he signed his first contract with what was then called the World Wrestling Federation, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper turns 60 years old today, April 17.

Let’s celebrate his milestone birthday with five fearsome facts about this legend of the squared circle.

Roddy Piper Got His Ring Name By Accident As A 14-Year-Old

Piper’s “rowdy” Scottish wrestling character was certainly among the reasons for his massive popularity. He always entered the ring wearing a kilt and playing bagpipes.

According to his 2002 autobiography In The Pit With Piper, he never could remember where he learned to play the bagpipes, but play them he could. When he stepped to the ring for his first match, on a small Winnipeg wrestling card, at the extremely tender age of 14 he played the Scottish instrument, as he did throughout his career.

The announcer read his name at “Roddy The Piper,” and though he lost the match in 10 seconds, the name, minus the definite article, stayed with him. Roddy Piper’s real name is Roderick George Toombs.

Roddy Piper’s Lifelong Best Friend Was An NHL Hockey Player

When they were both 15, Roddy Toombs aka Piper and another teen in Winnipeg, got into a fight. When the fight was done, the pair had such a respect for each other that they became fast friends. Cameron “Cam” Connor remained best friends with Roddy Piper for life.

Four years after his street brawl with the future “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, Cam Connor was drafted in the first round by both the NHL’s Montreal Canadiens and by the Phoenix Roadrunners of the old World Hockey Association, a league that for a short time in the 1970s tried to compete with the NHL. Connor chose the WHA.

Connor later jumped to the NHL where he won a Stanley Cup with the Montreal Canadiens in 1979, and retired from hockey in 1984, shortly after “Rowdy” Roddy Piper joined the WWF.

“Piper’s Pit” Helped The WWF Become A National Phenomenon

In the early 1980s, pro wrestling was divided into territories, with each regional promoter agreeing not compete with those from other regions. The World Wide Wrestling Federation owned by Vince McMahon Sr. ruled the Northeast, but when he sold the business to his son in 1983, Vince Jr. boldly decided to make his new WWF (he dropped the “Wide) a nationwide entertainment organization, and his wrestlers national, even global, celebrities.

Roddy Piper’s ability to spout riveting, improvised monologues was the best in the business. McMahon Jr. then made him the first wrestler to conduct interviews, rather the simply be interviewed, creating the “Piper’s Pit” segment on WWF TV broadcasts of the era. In the most memorable “Piper’s Pit,” “Rowdy” Roddy Piper smashed his guest, Fijian wrestler Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka in the head with a coconut, then shoved a banana into his face and whipped him with his belt.

The over-the-top violence and racial stereotyping was shocking even by WWF’s outrageous standards. Later, Snuka said that he and “Rowdy” Roddy Piper “spent hours” planning the segment — and that the coconut-to-the-head was his idea.

“Rowdy” Roddy Piper Wrestled In The Main Event Of Wrestlemania I

This year’s Wrestlemania XXX showed that over the last three decades, McMahon’s dream was more than realized and pro wrestling is now an accepted part of the mainstream entertainment industry.

In 1985, there was no such certainty. Staging the first Wrestlemania event at Madison Square Garden was an enormous gamble for McMahon that could have ruined his company and professional wrestling if it failed. But it did not fail, thanks in large part to “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, who brought his feud with WWF champ Hulk Hogan into a tag team main event between Piper and “Mr. Wonderful” Paul Orndorff squaring off against Hogan and Mr. T, then one of the biggest celebrities in the country.

“Rowdy” Roddy Piper later said that McMahon Jr. ordered him to “take a dive” to Hogan, but he refused, so the match ended in Piper’s disqualification instead.

"Rodwy" Roddy Piper
“Rowdy” Roddy Piper in 2009.

“Rowdy” Roddy Piper Was The First Wrestler To Be A Movie Star

When he starred in the 1988 science fiction film They Live, playing a drifter who discovers that rich people and politicians are actually alien invaders controlling the human race through subliminal messages, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper embarked on a long career of film and TV appearances.

His latest is the recently released straight-to-DVD film Pro Wrestlers Vs. Zombies, a title that is pretty much self-explanatory.

But as a movie actor, Roddy Piper will always be best-remembered for delivering a single classic line in They Live. “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubblegum.”

And it wouldn’t be a “Rowdy” Roddy Piper” birthday celebration without reliving that scene one more time.

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